Tuesday, September 29, 2015

Fall is officially here, even though breweries have been putting out Pumpkin beers for nearly a month now. With the dropping temps, cool nights, gentle breeze, dark evenings, and changing artists palates in the trees comes an innate hankering for something darker and rounder than the crisp and light beers for Summer. The Good Lord gave us Porters and Stouts for a reason, and He also gave us an internal timer that almost instantaneously switches to them from Saisons as the season changes. Like a junkie looking his next fix we yearn for that dark and roasty beverage to sooth our troubled souls. This is part of the reason I just rebrewed my Coffee Porter recipe (the other is because I need to have my flagship beers to give to potential investors). I swapped out the Crystal hops for Chinook on this round to avoid the herbal tea notes that Crystal can throw, and to get a little resin and pine in the mix. The last iteration had issues with the coffee additions as the coffee from the original recipe was no longer available. For this one I actually went with a blend of 2 different coffees from a local artisan and the complexity really makes the beer pop. This recipe was done on my first double brewday in nearly a year. Gotta say it was actually fairly smooth except trying to get all the beer into the fermentors in the fermentation fridge. This was also my first time doing an entire 11+ gallons together in one vessel, which works really well and ensures that I don't have any differences from 2 different pitches into 2 different Better Bottles. After primary fermentation was done this batch was split into 2 different beers. The fresh keg got the Coffee blend, and the 5 gallon carboy received 2 Hungarian oak cubes soaked for 2 months in Woodford Reserve Bourbon. It also received a pitch of Brett, and will get cacao nibs in a couple months. The first version of this beer is drinking quite nicely right now.